The 692km South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) is a pipeline being built to transport gas from the Shah Deniz field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea, through Georgia and on to the Georgian-Turkish border.

At full capacity, and after additional stages of development, it is envisaged that the pipeline will export up to 25 billion cubic metres of gas a year.

At the border the pipeline links up with the Turkish-built Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), as well as Turkey’s domestic supply grid at Erzurum.

As a partner in the development of the SCP infrastructure, MB Crusher has provided 13 MB-S18 S3 screening buckets for separating aggregates removed during the cut-and-cover process — to ensure that the filler for the pipeline trench is free of any abrasive elements that might otherwise damage the pipeline.

The MB-S18 S3 screening buckets are suitable for excavators from 20 tonnes to 35 tonnes, and for this project have been equipped on Caterpillar machines.

The fine screening of excavated material allows contractors to directly recover and reuse excavated material — a function that is particularly useful in road building, construction and maintenance of pipelines, where projects might otherwise require the purchase of dedicated aggregates for filler.

Screening also allows the entire process to be completed without transporting any excavated or replacement filler — making the technique environmentally sensitive.

MB-S18 S3 screening buckets can also equip MB’s magnet and the nebuliser kit, tailoring the tool to the application of separating ferrous metals from screened aggregates, while also inhibiting the emission of dust.

The unique and innovative conical shape of MB Crusher’s screening drum is also especially designed to significantly increase the hourly production performance and to screen all of the collected material, residue-free.

MB screening buckets can also be used to select for a range of different aggregate sizes through the re-equipping of interchangeable modular panels, available with different sizes of holes, depending on the requirement.

Construction of the SCP, which is being built along the same corridor of land as the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline through its passage in Georgia, will also tie up, via the TANAP at the Eastern Turkey border, with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) at the Western Turkey border some 1,900km away.

From there, the 870km-long TAP crosses Greece and Albania, from where it continues under the Adriatic Sea to Southern Italy.